Prof. Karen von Veh is Professor of Art History and Theory and current Head of the Visual Art Department. She is an art historian and is responsible for all the art history programmes in the department. She also lectures in art history and theory at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervises at Masters and PhD level. She is on the board of SAVAH (SA Visual Arts Historians) and on the international board of AICA (International Art Critic’s Association). She also serves on the editorial board of De Arte, an academic art historical journal published by Taylor & Francis. Her research interests are: contemporary South African women’s art, gender and post-colonial studies and the subversive reuse of religious icons in contemporary art. She has written two books and several book chapters, many journal articles and presented many papers internationally on these topics. In addition she has curated an exhibition based on her PhD thesis entitled Deconstructing Dogma; which was held at the UJ Art Gallery in May 2014. She was also co-curator of the South African Exhibition for the Beijing Biennale in 2015. This was the first time the Biennale in Beijing has had an exhibition from anywhere in Africa.

Recent Publications:

Books and Book Chapters:

•2019 von Veh, K. “Feminism as Activism in Contemporary South African Art.” In M. Buszek and H. Robinson (Eds.). A Companion to Feminist

•2012 “The intersection of Christianity and Politics in South African art: a comparative analysis of selected images since 1960, with emphasis on the post-

apartheid era.” De Arte 85. 2012. pp.5-25.

•2012 “How to make a national resource into a global treasure: Paul Weinberg and the UCT Visual Archives.” De Arte 85. 2012. pp.73-79.

Recent Conference Papers:

• 2018 Transitional Politics and the Fragility of Memory in South African Art. A paper presented at the AFSAAP Conference: Africa in Transition: Governance, Society and Culture. Held at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia from the 21-23 November 2018.

• 2018 Transition in South African Art seen through the lens of Christian Iconography. A paper presented at the ASAUK Conference held at the University of Birmingham, 11-13 September 2018.

• 2018 Revisiting Religion: Iconoclasm as renewal in post-apartheid South Africa. A paper presented at the annual SAVAH Conference: Troubling Legacies. Hosted by the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University, 4-6 July 2018.

• 2018 Contemporary Martyrdom in Diane Victor's No Country for Old Women. A paper presented at the Twelfth International Conference of Iconographic Studies: The Iconography of Pain. Held at the center for Iconographic Studies, Rijeka University, Croatia, 31 May-1 June 2018.

• 2017 Undermining hegemonic masculinity in South Africa: a discussion of works by Lawrence Lemaoana. A paper presented in the panel: New perspectives on feminism and gender studies – South Africa and Beyond. In the ACASA Triennial Conference, Accra, Ghana. 8-13 August '17.

• 2017 Iconoclasm as Renewal in South African Art. A paper delivered at the Eleventh International Conference of Iconographic Studies: Iconoclasm and Iconophilia. Held at the centre for Iconographic Studies, Rijeka University, Croatia, June 1 – 3 2017.

•2016 Moving the boundaries through Art: Diane Victor’s critical response to gendered violence in South Africa. A paper delivered in the

Literature, Culture and the Arts session of the 39th AFSAAP Annual Conference, Africa: Moving the Boundaries, held at the University of

Western Australia, Perth, 5-7 December 2016.

•2016 Textual Textiles: Gender and Political Parodies in the work of Lawrence Lemaoana. A Paper delivered in Intertextual Textiles: Parodies

and Quotations in Cloth. Conference held at the SARChi venue, UJ, 30 November to 2 December 2016.

•2016 The evolution of Feminism in the work of Diane Victor. A paper delivered in session 10: Gendered Practices, rubric 1: Globalising gender

studies, feminism and queer theory as part of the 34th Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art: CIHA 2016, held in Beijing,

China, September 15-21, 2016.

•2016 The role of Beauty and Perfection in Marian iconography - Contemporary responses to controversial images of The Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili

and Diane Victor. A paper delivered at the Tenth International Conference of Iconographic Studies: Marian Iconography East and West. Held at the